STEFFES SPOTLIGHT: Corey Graff
Corey Graff began his career at Steffes nearly 7 years ago as an Assembly Technician. At the time, he was just looking for a job while his wife finished college. What started as just a job slowly evolved into a career as he received multiple promotions through the years.
“My wife was in college and when I came here this was just a job for me until we found out where my wife would work for her job after college,” said Graff. “I found that it was more of a career for me than just a job after the first year at the company. I liked what the company stood for and the core values they had and saw opportunities for growth.”
After his first year, Corey was promoted to Production Lead and soon after received another promotion to Production Supervisor then to Operations Manager. His most recent promotion was to Business Development Manager for the contract manufacturing division.
Corey has a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Dakota and is currently working on his MBA through the University of Mary.
A typical day in his role as Business Development Manager consists of process implementation since the role is entirely new to Steffes, research and development, and learning more about the sales process in the industry since his background has primarily been in operations up to this point. He enjoys the challenges that come with diversifying the business and working through the reinvention process which is central to the Steffes mission and company culture.
“When I first started here, the conversation was always about reinventing ourselves every 5 years, and right now we’re at the pinnacle of that,” said Graff. “We all have control of our own destiny at Steffes and are able to make impactful decisions that can change the direction that the company is going.”
Corey said his favorite part about working at Steffes is the ability to work with so many people within different levels of the organization and the cultural focus on developing people and teams. His favorite memory from his time at Steffes comes from his first year working at the company.
“We did a pumpkin chucking contest out in the parking lot at Grand Forks West… it was a different experience from any place I had worked before,” said Graff. “I thought that was kind of a different team building type of experience.”
In his free time, Corey enjoys spending time with his wife and 2 young daughters doing arts and crafts or getting outdoors, golfing and traveling.